This invention relates generally to a rotary cutting apparatus for cutting vegetable products and the like into a plurality of segments for use in the food industry. More particularly, this invention relates to a rotary cutting apparatus designed to align a product, such as a potato, prior to cutting into strips not exceeding a maximum predetermined length.
Rotary cutting or slicing machines in general are known in the art and typically comprise a radially open impeller mounted for rotation within a stationary outer housing. See, for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,196,916 and 3,521,688. The vegetable product is typically fed axially into the interior of the impeller and is thrown or forced by centrifugal force in a radially outward direction into engagement with one or more cutting knives carried by the outer housing. A plurality of impeller blades secured to the periphery of the impeller carry the product rotationally about the interior of the housing for repeated cutting engagement with the cutting knife or knives so that the product is cut into a plurality of smaller slices or pieces.
Rotary cutting machines of this general type have been used to cut or slice a variety of vegetable products into smaller pieces having a variety of different sizes and shapes, depending upon the particular shape of the product fed into the machine and the particular configuration of the various cutting knives. For example, the machine has been adapted to cut whole potatoes into a plurality of slices which are delivered to an adjacent cross-cut spindle having a plurality of strip knives for dividing the slices into a plurality of French fry strips of uniform cross-sectional size and shape. In most instances, particularly in the cutting of whole potatoes into French fry strips, the rotary cutting machine has a size and shape and is geometrically oriented to maximize the average length of the final cut strips. For example, the rotary impeller has been oriented for rotation about a horizontal axis and the lengths and spacing of the peripheral impeller blades has been selected to permit longer potatoes fed axially into the impeller to fall between adjacent impeller blades in an orientation generally parallel with the horizontal axis of rotation. With this construction, these longer potatoes are also aligned generally in parallel with the slicing knife on the outer housing, resulting in potato slices of maximum length, thereby also resulting in maximum length French fry strips after cutting by the strip knives.
In certain circumstances, however, it has become desirable to limit the overall maximum length of individual cut strips. As an example, with the advent of the microwave oven and its increasing in-home use, it has become commercially advantageous to market parfried and frozen French fry potato strips in individual prepackaged serving units which can be quickly and easily heated for consumption in a microwave oven. The use of prepackaged serving units, however, inherently requires a product package of limited volumetric size containing only a few ounces of French fry strips, such as a paperboard carton having a length limit of about 4.5 inches as used by the J. R. Simplot Company, Boise, Id., with microwave reheatable French fries marketed under the trademark MICRO-MAGIC. With conventional rotary cutting machines designed to maximize French fry strip length, strips exceeding the limited package length of about 4.5 inches are commonplace, resulting in strips which will not fit into the package. In a modern high bulk volume packaging line, the presence of even a few French fry strips exceeding the package length will disrupt the packaging operation causing costly delays.
In the past additional cutting equipment has been proposed for use with rotary cutting machines as described above, wherein the additional cutting equipment has been designed to divide the potatoes or the cut strips in halves to avoid inclusion of strips having excessive length. However, the use of additional cutting equipment also unnecessarily divides shorter potato strips to increase substantially the overall distribution of short and sometimes unusable strips. Alternative strip length control techniques have utilized manual labor for selecting and hand cutting of potatoes having excessive length, but the use of manual labor is costly, requires individuals to handle knives thus creating the potential for injury, and further tends to slow production rate of a modern processing and packaging line. Still further, automated potato length grading equipment has been proposed for sorting out potatoes of excessive length, but such equipment is costly and occasionally permits passage of an undesirably long potato which, when cut, will disrupt the packaging process.
There exists, therefore, a significant need for an improved rotary cutting apparatus for limiting the length of cut French fry potato strips and the like automatically to a predetermined length limit without requiring additional cutting equipment, cutting steps, or the use of costly size grading equipment, and preferably by relatively simple and inexpensive modification of existing cutting machines. The present invention fulfills these needs and provides further related advantages.